ituation, where a wider range was subjected
to the eye, surveyed with admiration the uncommon face which nature
assumes, and made inquiries and attended to conjectures on the causes of
these inequalities. Some choose to attribute them to the successive
concussions of earthquakes through a course of centuries. But they do not
seem to be the effect of such a cause. There are no abrupt fissures; the
hollows and swellings are for the most part smooth and regularly sloping
so as to exhibit not unfrequently the appearance of an amphitheatre, and
they are clothed with verdure from the summit to the edge of the swamp.
From this latter circumstance it is also evident that they are not, as
others suppose, occasioned by the falls of heavy rains that deluge the
country for one half of the year; which is likewise to be inferred from
many of them having no apparent outlet and commencing where no torrent
could be conceived to operate. The most summary way of accounting for
this extraordinary unevenness of surface were to conclude that, in the
original construction of our globe, Sumatra was thus formed by the same
hand which spread out the sandy plains of Arabia, and raised up the alps
and Andes beyond the region of the clouds. But this is a mode of solution
which, if generally adopted, would become an insuperable bar to all
progress in natural knowledge by damping curiosity and restraining
research. Nature, we know from sufficient experience, is not only turned
from her original course by the industry of man, but also sometimes
checks and crosses her own career. What has happened in some instances it
is not unfair to suppose may happen in others; nor is it presumption to
trace the intermediate causes of events which are themselves derived from
one first, universal, and eternal principle.

CAUSES OF THIS INEQUALITY.

To me it would seem that the springs of water with which these parts of
the island abound in an uncommon degree operate directly, though
obscurely, to the producing this irregularity of the surface of the
earth. They derive their number and an extraordinary portion of activity
from the loftiness of the ranges of mountains that occupy the interior
country, and intercept and collect the floating vapours. Precipitated
into rain at such a hight, the water acquires in its descent through the
fissures or pores of these mountains a considerable force which exerts
itself in every direction, lateral and perpendicular, to procure a